At Western Shelter, we partner with response and recovery experts from across the globe to discuss how to better protect against and recover from devastating natural disasters. We have worked diligently across our company’s 30+ year history to develop and improve upon the products we make to serve responders with both common and tailored capabilities.
Founded in 1988 to offer a more sustainable solution for wildland fire camps, Western Shelter has always viewed Spring as the start of the U.S. Fire Season and a reason to refocus on our purpose and our customers.
While we have grown significantly since then, protecting firefighters and incident commanders remains at the core of our mission.
The National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) issued their initial outlook for the 2022 Spring/early Summer, forecasting above normal fire potential for the southern plains and southeast, with a concerned look at drought conditions in the West, the Plains, and Texas. February has already seen Fire activity increase, with the year-to-date number of fires and acres burned for the US at nearly double the 10-year average.
At Western Shelter, we’ve been preparing all winter for this scenario, and we’re ready to make sure you have the necessary resources at your disposal when you’re called to action.
We had the privilege of attending the Natural Disasters Expo in Miami Beach, FL. We joined over 350 worldwide disaster response and recovery experts to discuss how to better align with agencies and businesses to protect against and recover from natural disasters across the globe. The Expo focused on storms (particularly hurricanes and tornados), earthquakes, heat & fire, and floods. From Western Shelter’s perspective, we support responders to these different disasters with both common and tailored capabilities to meet their needs.
Over the last year, Cappy International has worked hard to feature the capabilities of Western Shelter throughout Japan. They’ve set-up and displayed our shelter systems at tradeshows such as the National Ambulance Crew Symposium in Sendai, the Annual Meeting of Japan Association for Disaster Medicine, International Healthcare Engineering Exhibition (HOSPEX), along with a deployment demonstration during the Disaster Health Services winter training event. Cappy International has secured space for these shows in 2022 and will continue to support our efforts in responding proactively to solutions within the disaster response and medical community.
The work doesn’t stop when the weather gets colder. Deployments in late fall and throughout winter require extra precautions be taken to ensure that both staff and equipment operate efficiently and safely.
We’ve put together this list of cold weather deployment tips. Have any good ones that aren’t covered in this post? Please let us know, so we can share.
Western Shelter has joined forces with Rajant Corporation, the Kinetic Mesh® wireless network provider, and Dejero, the leader in Smart Blending Technology for cellular backhaul, in designing a “Rapid Shelter and Network Deployment Kit”, used internationally by mobile field hospitals, disaster recovery centers, and emergency shelters in critical environments.
“We are charged with excitement for this partnership with Rajant and Dejero. It will allow us to provide private wireless network communications between field hospitals, command centers, and any variety of mobile sites, along with ultra-reliable, multi-network cellular backhaul,” said Bryan Hunt, Western Shelter Director of Sales. “This kit deploys quickly and serves as an essential product during an emergency response situation. The kit is the first of its kind to offer a complete wireless communication solution, including cellular backhaul and Kinetic Mesh to connect all remote sites while providing ubiquitous VoIP and Wi-Fi access. United States government-level encryption also meets HIPAA requirements for the use of this kit.”
Connectronics, a wireless distributor based in Cedar Rapids Iowa, created the kits and pre-configured all units to connect out-of-the-box. The Base Kit includes three (3) ES1-2450R BreadCrumb radios. The radios are accompanied with a Dejero GateWay network aggregation device to provide smart cellular bonding for high-capacity instant backhaul as well as remote support, tripod/speaker stands, a storage case, ethernet cables, zeroize cables, AC/DC plus DC/DC POE, antennas, lifetime software/firmware support, and post-sales support. Expansion and Enhanced Kits are also available.
“Western Shelter is the preferred choice for the disaster and medical response communities. They have been proven to support dependable field applications, which range from temporary shelter systems like housing camps, bases of operation, and mobile field hospitals,” stated Peter Lenard, Rajant Senior Vice President of Business Development. “Rajant is honored to provide simple, scalable, and instantaneous communications anywhere emergencies and frontline response are required.”
